-- From Geraldton to Perth

On December 15th after shopping in Woolworths I moved towards Cervantes. At kilometre 32 I left Brand Hwy to take a Scenic Drive which skirts along the coast up to my destination where I arrived about 16.30. It was a driving day without outstanding fact. The first part was carried out in Wheat Belt where the harvest was just completed. The second part was by the coastal road in white sand dunes with a strong land wind. Far away I looked at a farm of wind mills the first after the four ones in Denham. Cervantes is a true backwater where the Post is all at once a visitor Centre and a drugstore. The temperature since two days had strongly dropped, 30°C during the day and 19°C approximately in the early morning. Nights were peaceful and resting.

Nambung National Park
Pinnacles Desert

The park of 400 hectares homes the spectacular Pinnacles Desert where thousands of sandstone pillars up to 4 meters tall are scattered in a lunar golden sand landscape. Some are jagged, sharp edged rising to a point, some others resemble tombstones.
Interpretive Centre exhibits worthy pictures as well as two explanatory theories of the process of pillar formation. I give somme pictures of them.

I paid a visit of the park in the next morning while waiting for the dispersion of morning fogs and clouds darkening the sky. The light was not good enough. Curved by a strong wind from the sea I strolled the loop which twisted between pillars by on the move. The spectacle was dramatic evoking either ruins of a buried city or broken columns of a engulfed cemetery by any natural or human cataclysm. Colour and texture of sand are unusual, mixture of fine particles of golden grain and broken white mother-of-pearl. I could not satisfy me this strange scene of millionaire natural erosion.

A desert inhabitant.

Pinnacles Desert 
Nambung NP 
16/12/2009

I did not resist the pleasure of seizing the low angle light of the sunset on the Pinnacles Desert. I returned on the site. In spite of a strong land wind and a veiled sun, the lunar spectacle was fairy-like and extremely rare. I strolled between the pillars, I was fulfilled.

0n December 17, it was a small driving day to head to Perth by a beautiful sunny and windy day. I arrived at the Central Caravan Park in the early afternoon. The camp-site has an access Internet in wireless. Thus I could follow the sending of the carnet de passage en douane as well as of my new AMEX card, I had made them sent in hold collection by DHL.

The first day in Perth was devoted to two of problems to solve by cycling. Initially I went to appointment made with a doctor approved by the consulate of France for a medical certificate of the heavy truck driving license renewal. I was waiting for more than one half an hour before being received by the doctor who spoke French. The consultation was efficient, he signed the Cerfa 11245 forms without difficulty. Then I looked for the RAC, Royal Automobile Club, to buy a sticker indicating that my vehicle had a drive on the left: “Caution Left Hand Drive”. I returned to the camp-site to take my truck to travel to Sorrento, residential suburbs on West Coast. Of course the city of Perth is modern but without buildings exaggeratedly of great heights. The few old buildings date back from the end of the 19^th century. It is very broad and distances are, like everywhere else in Australia, very long.

On Saturdays December 19, I left to discovered the old Perth to knowing buildings dating back from the end of the 19th century primarily civil and religious. I started with the Western Australian Museum whose only interest is the showroom dedicated to the indigenous people and their conflicts with the British settlers and finally the recognition of their rights on the land of their ancestors. In the Australian literature they are called the "Traditional Owners". The text presented here is a piece of bravery, the abolition of the concept Terra Nullius. The room is rich in documents of this time, pictures and official files.

Then I traversed by bicycle the Walking Tour proposed by the Lp. The selected pictures are representative of British architectural art with the brick use. It was the time of the gold rush which drained much money.

The following day I went in excursion in Fremantle, well-known for the race of America's Cup won by Australia II. This forwarding I did it by bicycle by travelling by  train from Perth to Fremantle. Happy country where we travel by train with a bicycle. The centre town is very small and in this summer-morning Sunday there was not crowd. The sky was of a limpid blue under a refreshing breeze sea. Another happiness in Australia one circulates by bicycle on the pavements. I thus strolled with my nose in the air looking for some antiquities which would have escaped with the vindication of the property developers. There too civil and religious buildings remain like, it is usual with the British, prisons. At midday I sat down in a restaurant at sea front in front of a sumptuous fish plate, Tasting Plat.

The Maritime Shipwrecks Museum is dedicated to Dutch shipwrecks on the coasts of the Western Australia and more particularly to famous Batavia which sank on June 4th, 1629.

The skittle of Australia II winner of America's fCup putting at 132 years of reign without division of Americans.

Two prisons are registered at the inheritance of Fremantle. Round House the oldest public building of WA state was built in 1831. Old Fremantle Prison was operational from 1855 to 1991.

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